


Secret Santa

by itisunreal



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Christmas Shopping, F/M, Philinda Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 10:41:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13293102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itisunreal/pseuds/itisunreal
Summary: for the philinda secret santa on tumblr for anarchycoxprompt: shopping





	Secret Santa

Daisy slips through the door Coulson’s holding open, hands buried deep in her pockets, and shakes off the snow. “So, who’d you get?”

Stomping the excess buildup on his shoes, Coulson trudges forward. “I’m not telling you. It’s called a ‘secret’ santa for a reason.”

“Aren’t we supposed to be lying low?”

“Talbot isn’t happy with us, but we aren’t on house arrest. And this place is practically dead. We can’t possibly get into any trouble here.”

Daisy nods along, eyeing each empty store front as they lazily walk pass them. She agrees though, they’d be hard pressed to find themselves in any kind of trouble here. “So, what are we looking for?”

Shrugging, the corners of his mouth pull down into a frown. “I don’t know yet.”

“You really think you’re going to find something for her in a dying mall?”

Stopping, Coulson stares, eyes narrowed, wheels turning. And Daisy curses herself a little for that slip, she’d been doing so well.

“Daisy.”

It’s the tone that tells her she’s f-ed up, that he’s on to her. She shakes herself out of it. No, it was one slip. He couldn’t know anything from that, and this plan had been in motion too long for it to go bad now. “Half the people in it are female. It was a 50/50 chance. Besides, you’re not likely to find anything for anyone here.”

He half shrugs in agreement, starting forward again, and Daisy relaxes her shoulders following behind.

They nearly make it to the far side before there’s any sign of life, and Daisy huffs in annoyance. This place is a waste of time, and she’s got other people to harass today. “Can we at least lay low somewhere we might actually find something? Half this place is closed.

Coulson turns without a word, starting the trek back to the car. “You’re right, we’re never gonna find anything here.”

The drive to their next location is quiet, Daisy fiddling on her phone, but he’s not willing to ask what she's doing that has that look of concentration on her face. Pulling in, he manages to find the furthest parking space from the door, but it’s the only one he’s seen in the 15 minutes he’s been crawling around the lot.

Daisy shoves her phone into her back pocket as she gets out, hands digging into her pockets. “This is going to be fun.”

The way she smiles puts him off ease.

The mall is packed, full to the brim. They walk shoulder to shoulder, people running into either side of them. Coulson isn’t much happier with this pick, this crowd, but he can’t ask for much better on the 23rd. Every store is open, hustling and bustling, and there’s at least a chance here. Not much of one, but enough.

\---

“What about this?” Daisy asks, holding the offending item up in the palm of her hand, the other waving slowly back and forth modeling it.

He’ll admit, only to himself, if he had a garden, he’d buy the little sculpture. He’s partial to the large eyes, and springy neck, and the way the wings bounce when she gives it a shake. It’s not a bad little bird, but it isn’t right either, not the kind of thing he’s looking for.

His face scrunches, head pulled back. “Just who do you think I have?”

The smile falls from her face at the question, and he watches, amused, as she schools her features into one of innocence, shrugging. “I don’t know. Simmons?”

“This is unhelpful,” he says taking the weird bird statue from her, and setting it back on the shelf.

“Fine. I’m just gonna start grabbing anything I find interesting. You can yea or nay from there.”

As they leave, he gives the bird one last look. He should come back for it later, on day he might have a garden.

Daisy pulls him into the next store before he’s paying attention, and shoves a box into his hands while he’s still processing.

“What is it?”

“It’s an at home foot spa.”

“Are we going to do this at every stop?”

“Come on. We could have a girls night. Pedicures and rom-coms.”

He eyes her skeptically. “Put it back.”

She huffs taking it back from him, stalking off.

\---

The other gifts she brings him aren’t much better, and also centered around the team instead of one person. It’s frustrating, half feels like she’s doing it on purpose, half like she’s genuinely trying to help. And now they’ve ending up in a toy store.

He toys with display legos, trying to put it together without the instructions while she wanders up and down the aisles. He’s half done when he catches her in his peripheral, and drops what he’s doing. “You’re supposed to leave those in the box.”

“You’re supposed to, but some kid already liberated this one, so...” She lowers the large Nerf gun, and pulls the trigger. The foam projectile hits him in the chest, bouncing off, and his eyes follow it down to the floor before finding her again, uninterested.

Raising the gun, she pretends to blow smoke from the barrel, then rests it against her shoulder, quite pleased with herself. “We should get one of these for everyone. Christmas Nerf war.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Come on, Coulson. It’ll be fun. Everyone starts off in a different corner of the base. One gun, and a clip of ammo. Except May. No gun for her. Don’t want to lose in the first five minutes.”

There’s a bark of laughter, and he claps his hands together. “You think it would take five minutes?”

She pulls a foam knife from her pocket, and tosses it to him. “Exactly. She can have one of these. Last man standing wins. Kind of like a Shield Hunger Games. The Spy Games. No, I don’t like that. The--”

“Not what we’re here for.”

“Then what are we here for? You won’t tell me who you have or what you’re looking for. I don’t know how I can help.”

“Let’s just call it a day.”

“But you still don’t have anything, and Christmas is tomorrow.”

“I’ll think of something. Don’t worry about it. What about you? You get your gift yet?’

“Pfft, I’ve had it for weeks. I saw it, and was like ‘I have to have it. It's perfect.'”

“Good. Let’s get out of here. Some of us still have actual work to do.”

* * *

Passing by the Commons, Daisy changes direction. Simmons follows her in, but she ignores her for the time being. Target acquired, she pulls a chair out, sitting with a weary huff. “So, who’d you get?”

She waits for May’s answer, but she only continues to sip her tea. “What are you gonna get hi-im?” She catches herself halfway through the word, but it finishes itself anyway, despite her wishes. She is having a hard time controlling her mouth today. And the way May tilts her head tells Daisy that’s strike two. She really needs to think before she speaks. They’re so close. “What? Half the people in it are dudes. 50/50 shot.”

May’s apparently unconvinced because her brow raises, and Daisy pushes back in her seat. “I didn’t do anything. Geez, you people, so accusing.”

Simmons reaches for a cup, turning just enough to see May’s back, and Daisy dejectedly leaving. “I wouldn’t worry about it, she’s been asking the rest of us ours also.”

May shrugs, taking another sip. There’s a moment of silence where she thinks she’ll be able to finish her tea in peace – Simmons can be a talker, but generally leaves her be – but Daisy hops back through the doorway, humming. And again she plops down in front of May.

“ _Let’s go to the mall..._ ”

Furrowing her brow, May lowers the mug, holding it between both hands, and Daisy rushes an explanation before she even asks for it.

“It’s that song, you know? ‘ _Let’s go to the mall_ ,’ by that Canadian singer, Robin--” With no change in expression, Daisy stops herself from going on. “You know what, never mind. It doesn’t matter. I haven’t seen you leave the base in, like, weeks. So, I'm sure you could use a shopping buddy to find that secret santa gift you need.”

“I’ve got it covered.”

“What? Really?” Daisy melts into the table, bummed. “Aww, man. I was looking forward to going with you. I went with Coulson, and let me tell you, that was an experience.”

He comes through the door as she finishes, and shakes his head. “It was an experience because you made it one. You weren’t helpful at all.”

She sits back up, hand hitting the table in emphasis. “Lies. Moral support, and you just want all the credit.”

Grabbing a mug, he fills it to the top. He takes a sip from his coffee, and shrugs off her accusation before taking a sit across from her. “Well, it’s my gift, so...”

Simmons gaze jumps between the pair and Daisy, her expression tight. “Excuse us for a moment.” Weaving around the table, she grabs Daisy by the elbow, and practically yanks her from her chair, tugging her down the hall.

Coulson blows on the hot liquid, but sets it down without a drink. “You know what she’s doing right?”

“I have a vague idea.”

“Good. Good,” he says, picking at the handle of his cup. He’s just as curious as the others, just as nosy as they are, but is better trained in his approach. He taps his fingers along the smooth porcelain. “As long as everyone’s on the same page. So, what route did you go, serious or joke?”

She stands, ignoring his question, and puts her cup in the sink. She leaves without a look back.

\---

“You have to stop, you’re going to blow the whole thing.”

Daisy raises a hand to stop her. “Jemma, stop. It’s fine. I’m a trained super spy. I can handle this.”

Pushing Daisy further down the hall, hearing someone leave from behind them, she lowers her voice. “I don’t think that counts. You were trained by them, they know everything, all your moves.”

“Pfft, not all of them, and I can be subtle.”

“You were about as subtle as a fright train back there.”

“Yeah, cause pulling me out of the room like that wasn’t suspicious.”

“Still far less suspicious than you.”

Daisy pauses, head nodding side to side. “All right. All right, I get it. I’ll tone it down.”

“Thank you. It’s just until tomorrow. Then you can spaz out all you like.”

* * *

“How are we doing this? Everybody at the same time? One person at a time? What?”

“Let’s do one at a time, that way everybody can see what you get.”

“Oldest to youngest.”

As the rest nod in agreement, Coulson grumbles, standing. Picking though the boxes under their small tree, he searches for the one that is his. After a few minutes of fruitless patting, and no help, he finds a small box in the back corner behind the tree. It’s wrapped in silver and blue, a tiny bow on top. There still isn’t a name on it, but he’s certain it’s his.

Sitting back in his seat, he grabs the corner and rips. The paper pulls away with ease. He expected something...more considering who it was from. A layer of duck tape or the real gift wrapped in multiple boxes, but there’s nothing to indicate that it’s from her.

The paper tears away easily, and his face reflects off the polished protective case. A warmth spreads across his chest.The cards within look fantastic, perfect even. No stratches, no tears, no battered edges. How she’d managed this on such short notice--

Slack-jawed, he repositions to face her as he shuffles through the deck once, seeing what’s there. As he gets to the bottom of the pile, he finds the card of Cap saluting signed by none other than Steve Rogers. All of them are there though, she’d even managed the tricky one he could never find.

She’s smiling when he finally looks up, a bright, blinding smile, eyes crinkled in the corners. “Merry Christmas.”

“Where’d you get these?” he asks, again shuffling through them.

“I’ve been collecting what I could since Fury told me you where alive.”

He looks up then, grin faltering. That had never occurred to him. That she would even try to replace what he’d lost that day, not all of it, but a small part. He should have, because she does what she can how ever she can, but it’s been years since then. “Oh, I...”

“They weren’t with your things after--” May pauses, pulling herself back slightly. Her eyes shift down and away from him for a moment, lost in a memory he hasn’t heard, doesn’t have the heart to ask about, before finding him again. “I salvaged what I could from your deck when I found it, replaced the rest.”

The room is heavy, the eyes of their team glued squarely on them. He’d change it if he could, make this more private, knows how she hates being so scrutinized. How she prefers to stay in the shadows, even with them, and he wants to say something, crack a joke to relieve the tension, but there’s nothing. No way to break this fog. He wishes he could, it was a hard time for her, and being watched remembering isn’t an easy thing. But before he can do anything she clears her throat, and starts again. “Stark was less than pleased. Said something about a long talk after catching up on Super Nanny.”

She cocks an eyebrow at that, the corner of her mouth tugged up, a quip at his expense running through her head, he’s sure.But he can only shrug in response. “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Sure you don’t.” That smirk returns to a full-blown smile, and he feels himself deflate a little as the room seems to open up.

He’s reminded of the eyes on them as someone chokes out a small cough, and he almost feels the need to squirm in his seat at the attention, feels like an object on display rather than person opening a present. “Uh, I think you’re next.”

May’s unbothered by the younglings impatient noises to carry on, and her gaze lingers on the curve of his smile a moment longer than necessary before she stands. There’s an envelope in the branches, her name written neatly on the front, in a handwriting she is intimately familiar with, a red ribbon tied around the corner. Ah, Daisy, not half as sly as she thought.

Plucking the gift from it’s spot, she sits back next to Phil, closer than before, knees barely touching, and Daisy’s legs bounce in excitement like she already knows what’s going to happen. May shakes her head at the girl's enthusiasm. Ripping along the top, she pulls out a thick piece of paper, and stares at it, reading the information.

And it’s the reaction he’d half been hoping for, that mouth open, floundering for words kind of thing. That kind of shock is a rare thing to see on her, and he wishes he’d thought ahead and brought a camera to capture the moment.

She looks to him, brow creasing in slight confusion. “This is for the day after tomorrow.”

“I figured the sooner it was the less time you had to try and escape. There’s more also,” he says reaching out for it. Put the paper between his fingers, he rubs until the one piece becomes two.

“Two? Just assumed I’d invite you along.”

“Well, hoped. I mean, you can take whoever, it doesn’t have to be me. I just thought...you know...”

She looks at her gift again, and smiles, a grin full of mischief. “Talbot isn’t going to be happy about this.”

Coulson leans back into the couch, one arm searched along the back. “He never has to know.”

May scoffs at the ridiculousness of his statement.“You think our names aren’t going to be flagged for an international flight?”

Daisy’s head travels back and forth during the exchange, but stops at that. “Wait, what’d you get?”

“We could use false names. Break out Charles and Heidi again.”

“Phil...”

Her shoulders fall at that idea, but he keeps talking, eventually something brilliant will come out his mouth, only a matter of time. “Or I could talk to Stark, get back into his good graces. He’d let us borrow a plane. Or, at least, Pepper will.”

“What’d you get?” Daisy pipes in again, scooting closer to the edge of her seat.

“Tickets.”

“For?” She exaggerates the word stringing it along.

“Things.”

“Oh my g--” She throws her hands, letting them hit her legs. “It’s like pulling teeth.”

Mack nudges her, pushing her into Simmons. “Come on, Daisy, she doesn’t have to tell you.”

“Isn’t that the point of opening them together, to see what everyone got?” No one answers, but she doesn’t need their support to continue forward. “All right, better question: where are you going?”

“Australia,” May finally acknowledges, her fingers running reverently along the front of the tickets.

Coulson perks back up at the answer, jumping in. “There’s this little cabin in the outback. Gonna take a few days.”

Daisy frowns. They had just gone out yesterday because he hadn’t had a gift, but this trip sounded far from last minute. “How long have you had this?”

He looks away, pretending to think. “When did we draw names?”

“What the hell, Coulson? Why did we even go out?”

“Because you were insistent, and it’s hard to say no when you do that thing with your face.”

“What thing?”

“That sad, puppy-dog thing.”

“I don’t do a puppy-dog thing.”

“Oh! Oh, I know the look. Looks something like this,” Simmons says, pulling her brows together and up, eyes sad, lips pouting.

Daisy shakes her head at the imitation, unamused. “I don’t do that.”

“You do.”

“Yeah.”

“We’ve all seen it.”

“Traitors.” She glares at the team.

“Speaking of traitors and riggings.”

Jemma fidgets in her seat as Daisy blows the statement off. “No one was talking about rigging anything.”

“Who wants to tell me how she set this up?”

Daisy hold her hands up in surrender, as if it’d help her case. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn’t set anything up. I was just helping. It’s your first Christmas together – and just because you won’t say anything doesn’t mean we don’t know – you guys couldn’t not get each other.”

“I pulled May’s name first, she peeked over my shoulder, stole the paper, and told me to draw again.”

“Jemma!”

“What?”

“Oh my god, you agreed it was a good idea.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

Daisy gasps in mock shock. “Lies. It was all her idea. I had nothing to do with it until after it had already been put into place.”

“Now who’s lying?”

Coulson leans forward, waving the five of them off, that ‘slight-disappointed-father-look’ in his eyes. “It doesn’t matter who’s idea it was. We all agreed to secret santa, you should have just let it happen the way it was going to happen. Though I do appreciate the thought. But, we are far too old for this to be our first Christmas together--”

“Speak for yourself.”

He roll his eyes. “Okay. I’m far too old for this to be our first Christmas together--”

“Oh my god, you know what I mean. Seriously, _everybody_ already knows you’re together, just kiss already.” She crosses her arms, mumbling to herself as she rolls her eyes at their behavior. “Ridiculous. Acting like children.”

Sharing a silent look, May and Coulson stand, and approach their young team. Pulling Daisy into a hug as thanks, Coulson waves the others to join in.

It’s more contact than May will want, but while it lasts, it’s nice, warm. The kind of contact Daisy longs for some days, and better than most of the gifts she’s gotten in her life. It ends sooner than she wants it to. And as she clears her throat, blinks back the haziness of her eyes, and straightens her sweater, she spots them quietly trying to escape the common area. “Wait. Where are you going? We aren’t done.”

“You can show us later. After all, this is our first Christmas together, you think we want to spend it with our kids?”

Daisy smirks, shifting her weight to her back leg, and crosses her arms. “You know where you’re standing, right?”

Looking up, Daisy, all of them, can hear May groan from several feet away. “Come on, it’s traditions. You have to kiss under the mistletoe or it’s bad luck.”

“I don’t think that’s part of it.”

“It is, shut up.” She waves Fitz off as the senior agents look up again, then gaze at each other, and she thinks it’s really going to happen this time. May takes a hold of Coulson’s upper arms, pulling herself to her tiptoes. Their movements are slow as they lean in, eyes closed. Daisy almost has to stop herself from giddily clapping, but at the last second her hopes are dashed. May shifts, pulls to the side, and pecks his cheek instead.

“I don’t give shows,” she remarks turning, and heading down the hall, leaving Coulson to grin dopily at them.

Daisy holds her body stiffly. “What was that?!”

“You heard the lady, no shows. Have fun. Don’t break anything.”

Groaning, Daisy turns on the ball of her foot, and punches at the air. “So close.” She shrugs then, plopping back down. “There’s always next year.”

As she brings her gift to her lap, Mack leans forward onto his knees, hands clasped in front of him, a look of concentration on his face. “Did they just call us their kids?”

“They did,” Simmons answer, neatly untying the ribbons around her present.

“Yeah, you’ll get use to it.”


End file.
